


sea monsters

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic
Genre: Complicated Relationships, Confrontations, Extra Treat, F/M, Implied Relationships, Jealousy, Light Side Revan - Freeform, Multi, Polyamory, Post-Leviathan (Star Wars), Slight Canon Divergence, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-19
Updated: 2016-11-19
Packaged: 2018-08-31 14:23:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8581912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: “You’re the most frustrating woman I’ve ever met.” His head hung and his elbows perched themselves on his knees, his forearms hanging between his legs. He barked a bitter laugh and wouldn’t look at her as he spoke. “You and Bastila both.”“That’s still not an answer.” And when he still didn’t speak, having for the first time in his life lost his voice, she spoke for him. “Then I have a suggestion: we keep going, we get Bastila back. We figure it out from there.” I try to forget I’m the boogeyman we’ve been shadowing.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sweven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sweven/gifts).



Bastila’s pull was immediate, unavoidable, not her choice, but a choice she may well have made anyway given Bastila’s character, her strength, her certainty. She could believe in anything if Bastila asked it of her. Bastila’s voice soothed the empty yaw in her chest, a yaw she hadn’d understood until, well. The truth won out.

Carth, Carth was Bastila’s opposite in all the ways that mattered. He repelled: immediately and unavoidably. She would have avoided Carth by every means allowed to her if she could. But she couldn’t, of course. They were teammates and he made his feelings known even when he claimed he didn’t want to talk about it, probably would have tracked her down to speak his mind if she didn’t seek him out first. And given the _Ebon Hawk_ ’s size, there was no avoiding anyone anyway. Her skin prickled when Carth was around. His words grated. And he made her doubt herself; he made her doubt him, too, but she made it her business to doubt most everything she saw and heard—that wasn’t so unusual. And he didn’t take it as personally as she might have thought.

They had an understanding that way. And it worked for them. They shared a nettlesome sort of stability, full of thorns, she and Carth did.

Funny, then, that it turned out everything she—Revan, she was _Revan_ , Force damn it—knew about Bastila, about herself, was wrong.

In the aftermath of that, returning to the _Ebon Hawk_ was the hardest thing she’d ever had to do. Not least because—because even though Bastila had lied, leaving Bastila behind like that…? She didn’t know she was capable of it.

Maybe she really was Revan.

That seemed like something a person like Revan would—could—do.

“Hey, wait a second!” Carth called as the _Ebon Hawk_ ’s ramp closed behind them, her boots already stamping toward her berth. “You can’t just—you have to _tell_ them.”

“You tell them,” she replied, cold, because ice was the only thing that would keep her together right now, but ice was brittle and bitter and fragile and facing Carth might shatter her into a thousand tiny pieces if she let it. And she couldn’t let it. She still had to find Bastila.

Bastila.

_Why didn’t you tell me?_

“Tell us what?” she heard Mission say, but since Carth wasn’t following her, wasn’t reeling her back and making demands of her like he usually did, she didn’t feel obligated to answer to him or to Mission or to anyone. Not now. Not yet.

Carth answered for her, less unflattering than he could have been from what little of it she could hear. And then the door to her minuscule quarters, a glorified closet with a pallet bed and a ’fresher tucked into the corner, slid shut behind her and she no longer had to hear anything at all.

*

She didn’t expect much of a reprieve. Carth wasn’t Bastila after all. He didn’t have her patience or her forbearance. But she didn’t expect the knock she received only twenty minutes later, Carth’s voice muffled through the door to announce himself.

“We need to talk,” he said. And it was only shame that had her sprawling across her bed to slap at the door controls to let him in. She didn’t doubt he’d yell his complaints through the thick slab of metal separating them if she didn’t.

She peered up at him, as at ease as she could force herself to be on such short notice. She wasn’t sure if he bought it, his eyes scanning over every inch of her. _Probably searching for a lie. Probably finding it_. She might have done the same in his position and she couldn’t blame him even though the scrutiny made her want to lash out. She’d never much liked feeling hunted.

“Did you know?” he asked, each word clipped.

“No.”

“You know, I thought I could—” He sighed, brushing his hand through his hair as he paced across her floor and back again. She watched him, now searching him for signs of deception, something other than the wounded pride he’d wrapped around himself like a shroud. “I thought I could trust you.”

“So did I,” she said, every inch of her rebelling against the truth. If anyone has betrayed anyone here, it was between her and herself.

An almost sympathetic grimace crossed his face, replaced quickly by the thunderous anger he’d come into the room with. “You didn’t feel anything with that,” he wiggled his fingers around his ear, “between you and Bastila?”

She couldn’t mention the dreams even though in retrospect… in retrospect, it all made sense. Something of her turmoil must’ve shown on his face, because he scoffed, disgusted, and shook his head.

“You two were so close,” he said, disbelieving, the tenor of his anger taking on a darker quality that she could feel through the Force. “How could you not know?”

“You sound jealous.” A shot across the bow, spoken in a dull snap, one that hit more directly than she could have anticipated from the desolation it left in its wake, the silence deafening as his mouth slackened and his eyes widened.

“No. _No_ ,” Carth replied when he finally found his voice. “That’s not—that’s not what this is about.” He continued pacing, furious, and glared at the ground. Unable to look at her, he shook his head.

“Maybe Bastila should have told you,” she replied, ignoring his denial. Crossing her arms, she felt cornered by the accusations Carth didn’t have to verbalize for her to know existed and fought the urge to take an underhanded swipe at him for what he hadn’t yet said. “Because clearly you’re the only one affected by this. You’re the only one who deserved to know.”

“Oh, don’t do that. You can’t turn this around on me. You—you’re the reason I’m… and all this time I thought…” A huff of air exploded out from between his lips, a frustrated breath that spoke so much more than his words ever could. “I trusted you.” He stamped his feet. “I trusted Bastila.”

 _You’re not the only one_.

“So what do you want to do, Carth?” She gestured wildly at the small slice of the ship’s hull she could call her own. “Toss me out the back of the ship? Shoot me? Glower at me from across the room every time you see me and tell me I’m a liar?”

“No, that’s—” He sighed, deflating, taking a seat at the far end of her bunk. “That’s ridiculous.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“You’re the most frustrating woman I’ve ever met.” His head hung and his elbows perched themselves on his knees, his forearms hanging between his legs. He barked a bitter laugh and wouldn’t look at her as he spoke. “You and Bastila both.”

“That’s still not an answer.” And when he still didn’t speak, having for the first time in his life lost his voice, she spoke for him. “Then I have a suggestion: we keep going, we get Bastila back. We figure it out from there.” _I try to forget I’m the boogeyman we’ve been shadowing_.

“I’m going to be keeping my eye on you,” he confirmed to her.

“I didn’t expect any different.”

“If I sense…” He cleared his throat, bore holes into the wall to avoid looking at her. “I’ll do what I have to do.”

“Good. I hope you do.”

His features took on a spooked, haunted quality, and she crooked a self-deprecating smile at him.

“You think I want to be her?” Rolling her shoulder, she rubbed at her neck. “I… start acting like Revan, I _want_ you to.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“You find everything hard to believe.”

He laughed, broken. If this were any other time, she might have tried to comfort him. Right now, she wasn’t sure where their boundaries were, the lines shaking and skewing around her, rebuilding themselves along the lines Carth wanted to draw. “I’m just gonna have to trust you, huh?”

“Me,” she said, “and Bastila. Can you?”

“Do I have a choice?”

 _Do you want one_? “You care about us,” she said, sure, telling him a truth he probably didn’t want to hear right now. “You have to decide what that means.”

“Yeah, okay.” He climbed to his feet, looking so much the worse for wear, exhausted bags already forming beneath his eyes. “I’ll—I should go.”

She nodded her assent and watched him retreat, wishing she could ask him to stay, wishing she had that right. Because even if he did hate this, she knew where she stood with him. And that was a comfort worth keeping.

“I’m sorry,” he says from the doorway. “About Bastila. I know you, well… I’m sorry is all.”

 _Yeah,_ she thought, _me, too_.

 _Me, too_.

Instead, she said, “We’ll figure it out,” and she desperately, desperately hoped she meant it.


End file.
